In my first blog post about Facebook groups, I shared the basics of how to set a Facebook group up using my learnings from creating The Reading Snug group with the fabulous Kerry Fisher and Kelly Rummer. Now I'm sharing what to do once you set your group up to engage members and attract more. ​​

Forward-plan: Create a regular schedule of what content you are going to share. I do this as part of my monthly social media planning which you can read more about here. Once you have a content plan in place, you can use the Facebook scheduling tool (or one of the many social media scheduling tools) to put all your planned posts together in one sitting, minimising the time required to manage your group whilst still building trust with the audience. ​

Engage: The same rules that apply to your Facebook page apply to groups. Make time to look at the insights page for your group (available after your group reaches 250 members) to see valuable data on when your members are most engaged, who the most engaged members are, age and gender information and also top contributors. Once you have that data, make sure you use it. Schedule your posts to appear during the times your members are most engaged, include more posts of the types that got great engagement, send messages to your top contributors to thank them and lastly look at the demographic data and use that within your Facebook page to create target ads if you decide to run ads. I’ve learnt the unique selling point of a group like this is you are promising exclusive content people will not find on your other social media platforms. Photos of your office as it is in that moment. An exclusive extract from a work in progress. An insight into a new idea. Giveaways and live videos always work well too. Do not forget the simple things like polls too to gain reader feedback. Show your personality so group members feel they are getting to know you as well.

Interact: Make time each day to interact with your group members. It’s not enough to just post and leave. Respond and like.

Ask: Understand what you want from the audience – do you want them to write reviews? Be your loudspeakers? Read early copies of your novel? Do not ask for these things immediately as you need to build trust and make them feel valued. But don’t be afraid to ask once you do. Also, use your group to help write your novels. Ask them for ideas for character names, thoughts on a setting. They love feeling involved.

Publicise: It’s important to shout loud about your page with regular shout-outs from your social media platforms with the promise of a ‘launch week giveaway’ (a book giveaway is fine!). Add the link to the group to your website, your enewsletter and any other places you can. Eventually, add it to the back of your books too. Make sure you link your group to you Facebook author page too. Your author page can be used for advertising to get people to it if you wish.